Pope Benedict on St Athanasius

We bring you the text of Pope Benedict's catechesis during his weekly general
audience of the 20th June 2007in the Vatican's Paul VI Audience Hall :

Dear
Brothers and Sisters, Continuing our revisitation of the great Teachers of the
ancient Church, let us focus our attention today on St Athanasius of Alexandria. Only
a few years after his death, this authentic protagonist of the Christian tradition
was already hailed as "the pillar of the Church" by Gregory of Nazianzus, the great
theologian and Bishop of Constantinople (Orationes, 21, 26), and he has always been
considered a model of orthodoxy in both East and West. As a result, it was not
by chance that Gian Lorenzo Bernini placed his statue among those of the four holy
Doctors of the Eastern and Western Churches - together with the images of Ambrose,
John Chrysostom and Augustine - which surround the Chair of St Peter in the marvellous
apse of the Vatican Basilica. Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most important
and revered early Church Fathers. But this great Saint was above all the impassioned
theologian of the Incarnation of the Logos, the Word of God who - as the Prologue
of the fourth Gospel says - "became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1: 14). For
this very reason Athanasius was also the most important and tenacious adversary of
the Arian heresy, which at that time threatened faith in Christ, reduced to a creature
"halfway" between God and man, according to a recurring tendency in history which
we also see manifested today in various forms. In all likelihood Athanasius was
born in Alexandria, Egypt, in about the year 300 A.D. He received a good education
before becoming a deacon and secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria, the great Egyptian
metropolis. As a close collaborator of his Bishop, the young cleric took part with
him in the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council, convoked by the Emperor
Constantine in May 325 A.D. to ensure Church unity. The Nicene Fathers were thus able
to address various issues and primarily the serious problem that had arisen a few
years earlier from the preaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius. With his theory,
Arius threatened authentic faith in Christ, declaring that the Logos was not a true
God but a created God, a creature "halfway" between God and man who hence remained
for ever inaccessible to us. The Bishops gathered in Nicaea responded by developing
and establishing the "Symbol of faith" ["Creed"] which, completed later at the First
Council of Constantinople, has endured in the traditions of various Christian denominations
and in the liturgy as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. In this fundamental
text - which expresses the faith of the undivided Church and which we also recite
today, every Sunday, in the Eucharistic celebration - the Greek term homooúsios is
featured, in Latin consubstantialis: it means that the Son, the Logos, is "of the
same substance" as the Father, he is God of God, he is his substance. Thus, the full
divinity of the Son, which was denied by the Arians, was brought into the limelight.
In 328 A.D., when Bishop Alexander died, Athanasius succeeded him as Bishop of
Alexandria. He showed straightaway that he was determined to reject any compromise
with regard to the Arian theories condemned by the Council of Nicaea. His intransigence
- tenacious and, if necessary, at times harsh - against those who opposed his episcopal
appointment and especially against adversaries of the Nicene Creed, provoked the implacable
hostility of the Arians and philo-Arians. Despite the unequivocal outcome of the
Council, which clearly affirmed that the Son is of the same substance as the Father,
these erroneous ideas shortly thereafter once again began to prevail - in this situation
even Arius was rehabilitated -, and they were upheld for political reasons by the
Emperor Constantine himself and then by his son Constantius II. Moreover, Constantine
was not so much concerned with theological truth but rather with the unity of the
Empire and its political problems; he wished to politicize the faith, making it more
accessible - in his opinion - to all his subjects throughout the Empire. Thus,
the Arian crisis, believed to have been resolved at Nicaea, persisted for decades
with complicated events and painful divisions in the Church. At least five times -
during the 30 years between 336 and 366 A.D. - Athanasius was obliged to abandon his
city, spending 17 years in exile and suffering for the faith. But during his forced
absences from Alexandria, the Bishop was able to sustain and to spread in the West,
first at Trier and then in Rome, the Nicene faith as well as the ideals of monasticism,
embraced in Egypt by the great hermit, Anthony, with a choice of life to which Athanasius
was always close. St Anthony, with his spiritual strength, was the most important
champion of St Athanasius' faith. Reinstated in his See once and for all, the Bishop
of Alexandria was able to devote himself to religious pacification and the reorganization
of the Christian communities. He died on 2 May 373, the day when we celebrate his
liturgical Memorial. The most famous doctrinal work of the holy Alexandrian Bishop
is his treatise: De Incarnatione, On the Incarnation of the Word, the divine Logos
who was made flesh, becoming like one of us for our salvation. In this work Athanasius
says with an affirmation that has rightly become famous that the Word of God "was
made man so that we might be made God; and he manifested himself through a body so
that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he endured the insolence
of men that we might inherit immortality" (54, 3). With his Resurrection, in fact,
the Lord banished death from us like "straw from the fire" (8, 4). The fundamental
idea of Athanasius' entire theological battle was precisely that God is accessible.
He is not a secondary God, he is the true God and it is through our communion with
Christ that we can truly be united to God. He has really become "God-with-us". Among
the other works of this great Father of the Church - which remain largely associated
with the events of the Arian crisis - let us remember the four epistles he addressed
to his friend Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, on the divinity of the Holy Spirit which
he clearly affirmed, and approximately 30 "Festal" Letters addressed at the beginning
of each year to the Churches and monasteries of Egypt to inform them of the date of
the Easter celebration, but above all to guarantee the links between the faithful,
reinforcing their faith and preparing them for this great Solemnity. Lastly, Athanasius
also wrote meditational texts on the Psalms, subsequently circulated widely, and in
particular, a work that constitutes the bestseller of early Christian literature:
The Life of Anthony, that is, the biography of St Anthony Abbot. It was written shortly
after this Saint's death precisely while the exiled Bishop of Alexandria was staying
with monks in the Egyptian desert. Athanasius was such a close friend of the great
hermit that he received one of the two sheepskins which Anthony left as his legacy,
together with the mantle that the Bishop of Alexandria himself had given to him. The
exemplary biography of this figure dear to Christian tradition soon became very popular,
almost immediately translated into Latin, in two editions, and then into various Oriental
languages; it made an important contribution to the spread of monasticism in the East
and in the West. It was not by chance that the interpretation of this text, in
Trier, was at the centre of a moving tale of the conversion of two imperial officials
which Augustine incorporated into his Confessions (cf. VIII, 6, 15) as the preamble
to his own conversion. Moreover, Athanasius himself showed he was clearly aware
of the influence that Anthony's fine example could have on Christian people. Indeed,
he wrote at the end of this work: "The fact that his fame has been blazoned everywhere,
that all regard him with wonder, and that those who have never seen him long for him,
is clear proof of his virtue and God's love of his soul. For not from writings, nor
from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Anthony renowned, but solely from his
piety towards God. That this was the gift of God no one will deny. "For from whence
into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who dwelt
hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes his own known everywhere, who also
pro-mised this to Anthony at the beginning? For even if they work secretly, even if
they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all,
that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper
and thus be zealous in the path of virtue" (Life of Anthony, 93, 5-6). Yes, brothers
and sisters! We have many causes for which to be grateful to St Athanasius. His life,
like that of Anthony and of countless other saints, shows us that "those who draw
near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them" (Deus
Caritas Est, n. 42).